Stairs

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Stairs are a dungeon feature which connect floors of the Dungeon and its assorted branches; they are the primary means of moving from one part of the Dungeon to the next.

Useful Info

Stairs take you up or down a level. An upstair on a lower floor will usually be connected to a downstair on a higher floor, and vice versa. Some branches' stairs work differently (see below for detail).

Using a staircase normally takes 2.5 turns; 1.5 turns in the old location, and 1.0 turn in the new location. Using a stair with an unknown destination (stairs that display a yellow *) is "fast", spending only 0.25 turns in the new location. This means that, when descending an unknown staircase, you'll always get a chance to act before monsters do.

Normally, only the player character will use stairs. However, most non-summoned monsters will follow you through stairs if they are adjacent to you.

Using the up staircase on D:1 ends your game, whether or not you have collected the Orb of Zot. If you don't have the Orb, the game will ask for a confirmation.

Layout

Each floor within a branch normally contains three up staircases and three down staircases. Traveling between branches is restricted to a single staircase ("branch entrance" / "branch exit").

In addition, floors may also contain escape hatches, which function as one-way staircases and are a different color than normal staircases. Also of note are shafts, a type of trap which can drop you 1-3 floors.

Special

Sealed Stairs

Vault wardens may cast the Seal Doors spell to seal all staircases and doors within range. Such staircases are impassable until the seal is lifted, either after enough time has passed or the caster has been killed.

The Abyss

Instead of regular stairs, the Abyss has one-way Abyssal Stairs leading deeper into the Abyss. These are generated randomly or after the player has gained a certain amount of experience. There are no up-staircases in the Abyss -- only exits leading back out. These exits are randomly generated, becoming more common in the deeper layers of the Abyss and are much more common once you have collected the Abyssal Rune; exits may also be generated after killing enough monsters.

Hell

In the Hell branches (Gehenna, Cocytus, Tartarus, and the Iron City of Dis), there are only 1 set of stairs, except on the final level. And, instead of staircases up, there are portals out, which immediately take the player back to the Vestibule of Hell; these portals serve as the destinations for the staircases down from the previous floor.

Pandemonium

In Pandemonium, each floor can only be visited once. Each floor has at least three "gates to another region of Pandemonium", which are also sometimes referred to as one-way stairs. These gates do not lead to any particular destination in the next region of Pandemonium -- you may be placed anywhere, including next to that realm's Pandemonium lord. Players may exit Pandemonium by using an exit portal, but these are rare (though each rune you collect in Pandemonium makes finding an exit more likely). More common are "exits through the horrors of the Abyss", which lead to the Abyss and will return players to the Dungeon after they find an exit from the Abyss.

The Tomb

The Tomb of the Ancients has cursed one-way staircases instead of regular stairs, which force players to locate another staircase to return to a previous area instead of simply heading back up the stairs they came down. Additionally, there are not always three stairs up and three stairs down on each floor of the Tomb. See The Tomb article for more details.

Tips & Tricks

• If you don't think you've fully explored a floor, but can't see anywhere else to explore, use the minimap (or press X then > or < to cycle through up/down stairs respectively) to count the number of normal up and down staircases you've found (not escape hatches or branch entrances). If you see less than three of each, some hidden area of the floor is walled off from the area you're in. The best way to reach it is to exit the floor and then reenter through an unexplored staircase on the floor above or below. Such unexplored stairs are indicated with a * in the top left of the stair tile in Tiles, or the stair glyph being coloured white in Console.
• Be aware that going up or down staircases takes time. Nearby monsters may still hit you or cast spells before you escape your current floor.
  • There are two parts in taking the stairs. The "leaving" part lasts 1 turn and can be interrupted, for example, you can be constricted by a naga. The "entering" part has different duration depending on whether you have visited the floor previously. It lasts 0.75 turns the first time or 1.5 turns otherwise. Haste and Slow affect the time needed to use stairs.
• Climbing while confused might make you trip and fall, taking damage and landing at the bottom of that particular staircase (if you were trying to climb up, you stay on the current floor; if you were climbing down, you land on the next floor).
• Most monsters will follow you if they are adjacent to you when you use a staircase. While this can make it difficult to escape a monster on your heels, it can also be used to separate hordes of monsters by "stair dancing" (luring them upstairs and slaying them a few at a time). This is especially useful for stairs placed against walls or corners, limiting the number of monsters that can follow you. Some monsters (summons, derived undead, silent spectres, Geryon, and the Royal Jelly) cannot use stairs, trapping them on the floor they spawned on unless they fall down a shaft. However, they can still attack you while you're leaving, and they may wait by the stairs for your return.
  • Annoying blinking monsters such as crimson imps or phantoms can also be disposed of in this manner if you are unable (or just too impatient) to kill them. Once the monster has followed you upstairs, wait for it to blink away and then go back downstairs without it following you.
• By luring monsters upstairs, you can make it safer to fight them, as you are very unlikely to encounter a new monster when fighting on a cleared floor and do not risk dying from having to climb upstairs when on low health. Additionally, you can pillar dance as much as you like on a cleared floor without being interrupted by other monsters.

History

• Prior to 0.29, stairs would only be "fast" when entering a new level; not all unknown staircases were fast.
• Prior to 0.28, the Hells had the usual 3 sets of stairs on each level.
• Prior to 0.22, player ghosts couldn't use stairs.
• Prior to 0.21, monsters spawned over time on floors in the main dungeon as well as on level generation. Sometimes, these monsters could be spawned from stairs, and if the staircase was to a different branch, this could lead to monsters from other branches spawning in your current branch. (This had the potential to generate some fairly scary encounters, such as finding an azure jelly in the Lair.)
• Prior to 0.20, The Tomb had normal staircases instead of one-way stairs.
• Prior to 0.16, stair mimics could be found, which would then fight the player when discovered.
• Prior to 0.13, each branch connected to the Dungeon and the Lair had three exit staircases, in spite of the fact that they only had one entrance.